‘Brilliant!’ I told Dave Alton, the Ops Officer. ‘We’re a bit north of that, but it can’t be more than two hundred ks — less than an hour’s flying time.’ I gave him the coordinates of the LZ, and a brief description of the area. ‘We’re calling the feature the Mall,’ I said. ‘It’s that flat and straight.’
‘What about hazards?’ he asked. ‘Hills? Power-lines?’
‘Nothing. No hill more than a couple of hundred feet within miles, and as for electricity, there ain’t none in this part of Africa. Listen, you don’t have any info on the cache site?’
‘Nothing’s come up yet. We’re still trying, but we doubt there’s any record.’
‘Roger. We think we’ve got the area pin-pointed, and we’re about to start a CTR.’
‘Good work. What have you done with Genesis?’
‘Buried him. I hope it’s only for the time being. We’re planning to go back for him if we get a chance.’
‘Roger.’
We agreed to open up the satcom link for five minutes every hour, on the hour. Then we shut down.
‘Why not call the Herc in now and fuck off out of it while we’ve got the chance?’ Danny suggested.
‘You can, if you like,’ I told him. ‘Personally, I’m staying to sort that bastard Muende.’ I didn’t mean to sound anti-Danny, but that was how the remark came out, and I saw him looking a bit pained. ‘Nothing personal, mate,’ I added. ‘But you weren’t there when he had Whinger butchered. You didn’t see what a barbarous fucking ape he is.’
By 1150 we were on the move again, with the pinkie leading, and soon the outskirts of Ichembo came into view — the usual string of shacks made from corrugated iron, cardboard, packing cases, pallets and so on. Also in view, and clearer now, was the low escarpment to our right, where the land ran up to the plateau Jason had described.
‘Eh!’ exclaimed Pavarotti suddenly. ‘Look at this: the bloody barracks.’
On our right ran the remains of a two-metre chain-link fence. Stretches of wire had been taken down and carried off, and holes cut in the parts that remained. Inside the perimeter lay the wreck of a barracks, long, low huts with doors and windows ripped out, roofs collapsing. Around them was a flat, weedy wilderness of former drill squares and vehicle parks. Under the glare of the sun everything looked baked and dusty and dead.
With minimal warning to Chalky, who was driving behind, Pav swung the pinkie right-handed through one of the gaps in the fence and headed straight across an old parade ground.
‘Stands to reason!’ he shouted. ‘There must be access from this place, straight out on to the training area at the back.’
In less than two minutes his hunch proved correct. The rear fence had scarcely been vandalised, and a pair of exit gates was still closed by a rusty padlock and chain. Rather than alert the neighbourhood with an explosion, we chopped through the chain with bolt shears and hauled the gates open, squealing on their hinges. Beyond them a dirt road went up through a cutting, between walls of grey-brown sandy rock. From the weeds that had sprung up on the track, we could see it hadn’t been used in years.
‘Jesus!’ I shouted to Pav. ‘This is it! We’ve hacked it!’
The little canyon was no more than a hundred metres long, and towards the top our expectations rose even higher when we found the road blocked by a sagging wooden pole, painted pale blue and bound with barbed wire. A metal notice which had once hung on it had fallen off and lay face-down in the dust. I jumped out, picked it up and turned it over. Half the writing had gone, but the red letters that remained were in Cyrillic script.
‘Stringer!’ I yelled, holding the sign up. ‘What does this say?’
‘No entry,’ he translated. ‘Danger. Keep out.’
‘Shit hot!’ went Pav. ‘We’re closing in.’
Again there was no need for a demolition charge. The posts supporting the barrier were made of wood, which had been eaten away to a skeleton by termites. One push from the front of the pinkie and both snapped off in puffs of dust. We crunched over the remains of the barrier and motored to the top of the bank. A wilderness of withered shrubs and knee-high dead grass stretched off into the distance. The plateau had a blasted, lifeless, desolate look.
By then everyone was well hyped-up, but Pav was cool enough to look behind us and see that, from this higher ground, there was a long view out over the town. Even better, through the heat haze, we could see a road coming up from the south to join the one we’d just left. The junction was seven or eight hundred metres from where we were standing.
‘Let’s split in two,’ Pav suggested, pointing at the southern road. ‘If Muende comes, that’ll be his route. We can OP it from here and keep the rest of you informed while you recce ahead.’
‘Right,’ I agreed. ‘Better cam up, just in case.’
Pav backed the mother wagon between two tall patches of shrubs, aligning it so that the crew could watch both our own track and the southern approach road from the cab. Stringer, Danny and I left them slinging cam nets from the bushes, and drove on into the wilderness.
For the first few minutes I remained on a high. The place obviously had been used as a training area. Rusting sheets of metal riddled with bullet holes lay around. Roofless concrete-block buildings, without doors or windows, had been assaulted time and again. A pistol range had been excavated from a high sandbank. All this was encouraging, and I felt we were hot on the scent.
Then I began to realise how large the area was. The further we went, the more uneven the terrain became. Low hills restricted our view. We seemed to be driving along the main drag, but branch roads ran off to left and right, disappearing into the wastes of rock and dead grass. Black-and-white painted wooden signpost arms had once pointed to various outlying destinations, but now they had either fallen down or lost their lettering, and they gave no indication of where all the side tracks led.
After five minutes, and about five kilometres, I went on the radio to Pav, and said, ‘This place is fucking enormous.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he went. ‘It’s not surprising. One thing the bastards aren’t short of is space.’
‘I reckon it runs out into the desert and goes halfway to bloody Namibia. There’s tracks leading off in every direction. Wait one, what’s this?’
Stringer was pointing to our left. Below us in the distance, carved out of the face of a low hill, was a semi-circle of what looked like bunkers: pairs of corrugated iron doors, about fifty metres apart, faced on to a wide-open flat area the size of a football field.
‘This looks better,’ I told Pav. ‘Something like an ammunition storage area. This could be it. Stand by while we recce it.’
‘Roger.’
With my pulse speeding up I drove down the access track and on across the open ground to the right-hand pair of doors. Each of them was about ten feet square, an entrance high enough and wide enough for large trucks to drive in. Most of the pale-green paint had peeled off the metal, and patches of rust were eating away at it.
As soon as we drew up alongside, my excitement started to wane. The doors were mounted on rollers and held together by nothing more formidable than one big hasp. There was a ring which would have taken a heavy padlock, but no lock in place. It took a big heave from Danny and me, pulling in unison, to shift one of the doors along its track. Metal rollers squeaked and groaned as we forced it open half a metre. Inside, the heat was phenomenal.
‘Torch,’ I called to Stringer, and he flipped me one from the vehicle.